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Journalism of Courage
SILLY EXCUSE
THE Station Area Traffic Improvement Scheme, a crucial part of the World Bank-funded Mumbai Urban Transport Project, that was to decongest the entries and exits to suburban railway stations, was suddenly dropped during the course of the project. It was assumed that the component, which could have brought relief to lakhs of commuters daily, was scrapped as it was tedious to implement with the station areas currently being in complete disorder. But GR Madan, a former Indian Railways official and now with a private consulting firm, speaking at a conference on urban mobility, said the scheme was dropped for a “very silly reason.” During the duration of the project, the rupee-dollar equation changed and the cost of servicing the loan increased. “Anyway, the railways and local authorities were bickering over who should construct what and who should maintain what, so when the loan became expensive, the scheme was scrapped.”
TO LEAVE OR NOT TO LEAVE
THE Uber rape incident has put all transport authorities in a spot. The brunt was mostly faced by transport commissioner Mahesh Zagade, who fell ill at just the wrong time. The past one week, the commissioner was on sick leave. The phones, however, started ringing since Saturday last week and there was no resting then. “Finally my wife got irritated with the spate of calls and asked me to leave the house and go back to work,” Zagade confided. He is overseeing the security arrangements of all taxi services in the state now.
WAKING THE DEAD
THERE is no doubt that officials at the Brihanmumbai Municipal Organisation (BMC) have a tough time dealing with political leaders while replying to their questions, but a common excuse that one gets from officials time and again is that the municipal councillors are harping on old issues. After a recent standing committee meeting, where corporators rapped the audit department of the civic corporation, a senior official from the department said, “Yeh toh bas gade murde ukhad rahe hain, (They are doing nothing but resurrecting the dead)”.
TWITTER TO THE RESCUE?
GIVEN the traffic snarls across the city for a plethora of reasons, the traffic police is planning to get onto social micro-blogging website Twitter to help the public be aware of the traffic situation in the city. The main reasons mentioned are to spread awareness and give the commuters a chance to take a detour or brace themselves. “We earlier had a Facebook page, but there were a lot of negative comments on it against the police that defeated the purpose. Twitter may not be a counter productive idea as we can control the content addressed to us,” said a senior police officer with the Mumbai police’s traffic division. Though the time has not been specified for the attempt, the traffic police are keen to start this idea as they are discussing the logistics of the project.
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